[chroma]

If anything I'd say it's the opposite. A random person can get away with cons and scams for a long time. Whenever they get caught, they can just set up shop somewhere else. They can change their name (or simply lie to others about their name). Famous people can't do that. If you're famous, you can commit one scam before your reputation is ruined. Even if the story manages to avoid the news, people talk and word spreads. The incentives are such that a purely selfish billionaire sociopath is better off being honest.

Also, being extremely rich makes you a target for ambitious or activist prosecutors. Everything everywhere is securities fraud.[1][2] Whether you're hung out to dry or not is determined by how much your behavior has annoyed people in certain departments of the US government, or how much you've annoyed their friends.

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...

2. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-06-22/everyt...

[enragedcacti]

The names of the CEOs of every major MLM are out there but many of them probably live very easy lives unhampered by the obvious lies.

Alex Jones got away with it for 20 years before his own hubris of not complying with the courts took him down a peg.

Tons of celebrities ran their own pump-and-dump cryptos and their reputations are doing just fine.

Rich people just grift differently imo.

[hackernewds]

Exactly. Most like free of any consequence, and often above the law a la Russian interference, tax fraud, Jan 6, Mar-a-Lago documents

[id]

Trump University was a scam - it didn't stop Trump from being elected.

[trap_goes_hot]

He paid the price for that (and other things) via lawsuit settlements. Trump also had successful business ventures, so people saw him as a mixed bag. On another note, you don't need to be virtuous to be elected - just look at most politicians.

https://internationalbusinessguide.org/trump-business-career...

[kgwxd]

Then why can't I go to any news site without seeing a fresh new story of some rich/famous person getting caught red-handed being terrible and then gaining popularity from it?